The tangible advantages before the Note that the S20 Ultra brings to the table, though – extra camera detail and lossless zoom, longer battery life, or smoother 120Hz scrolling – are largely worth the price premium. With the Note 10+ 5G, at least, rather than the $1100 4G model. If you think prices way north of a grand are normal for a phone, that is, and unless you find a good Note promo.

Granted, the amount of S20 Ultra’s captured detail and the crazy zoom levels are unmatched but, again, the Note 10+ takes very good photos, too.

To recap, Samsung isn’t targeting the Ultra towards the 10+ owners anyway, but even if it did, the Note has twice the base storage and an S Pen to fight off any heretic thoughts about splurging $300 extra for the Ultra with.

Design and displays

Nominally, the 6.9” S20 Ultra display is slightly larger than the 6.8-incher of the Note 10+, but since it employs a taller aspect ratio, the surface area of both displays is basically the same – 17.7 vs 17.6 square inches.

The 20:9 display of the Ultra, however, brings about a narrower body, making the phone slightly easier to hold and operate with one hand than the Note. If we can talk about ease of handling with phones that are bordering on the 7” mark, that is, plus the S20 model is heavier to balance and more uncomfortable in pockets.

For all other practical purposes, the Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Note 10+ employ the best that the OLED display technology can offer when it comes to contrast and standard gamut or rich color representation.

The combination of record low mirror reflections and peak brightness north of 1300 nits makes them the best there are at outdoor, sunlight visibility as well. The maximum power consumption of the displays is slightly in favor of the S20 Ultra, though, which should positively reflect on the battery life in bright environments.

Camera & audio

Not to rain on the Note’s parade but the camera set of the S20 Ultra is second to none when it comes to raw specs. A giant 108MP sensor and 48MP zoom camera with periscope lens have never been tried before, and the “100x Space Zoom” notion on the back of the Ultra engraves its superiority.

The Note 10+, however, is nothing but excellent when it comes to picture quality, albeit with a set of 12MP sensors for the main and 2x telephoto zoom cameras, abetted by a 16MP one with ultrawide angle lens.

Samsung is prepping a grand camera update for the S20 Ultra but out of the box its main advantage over the Note 10+ camera amounts to the level of detail and zooming it is able to capture. Nowhere is that more visible than in the well-defined pebbles on the stairway to the monument here below. 

The S20 Ultra photos also exhibit higher contrast and better white balance with truer-to-scene, albeit colder in comparison to the yellowish Note 10 overtone colors. When shooting people, though, the Ultra’s algorithms are trained to emphasize faces by brightening and overexposing the shot, in addition to smooth-plastering the skin surface. The Note’s camera software keeps things looking more natural in those scenarios.

Needless to say, zooming with the Ultra returns way better details and sharpness (up to 10x and even 30x when there is enough light), while the Note maxes out at 2x telephoto. The Ultra also has a slight edge in low light predominantly with detail and bright highlights but the Note 10+ performs pretty well at night, too.
In comparing the front cameras, however, the Galaxy S20 Ultra is a mixed bag. It has a solid 40MP sensor that resolves a greater amount of detail and can shoot excellent, well-lit portraits. Sometimes, however, Note 10+ delivers more balanced selfies, while on the Ultra they are overexposed and the skin imperfections fixed a bit too aggressively.

When it comes to video recording, the Ultra also has the upper hand, be it only for the ability to do 8K definition, or to employ usable 5x zoom while recording footage.

For all intents and purposes, however, the video stabilization, details and smoothness are top notch on both phones, and very close if we compare the most used mode – 1080p at 30fps. The color credibility round here goes to the Ultra again with its more natural white balance presentation.

Video is just one part of the multimedia equation, and the audio performance from the huge handsets with “Dolby Atmos”-certified stereo speakers “tuned by AKG” is equally impressive. The same goes for the minimalistic earpiece and the multiple noise-canceling mics that deliver very good call quality on both ends.

As far as speaker loudness and output quality, Samsung has seemingly upgraded the audio on the hush-hush, as it sounds better on the S20 Ultra when sitting side by side with the Note.

Software & performance

Running Samsung’s latest OneUI 2.0 layered on top of the latest Android 10 edition, the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Note 10+ strike the fine balance between a feature-rich interface and the notorious core Android smoothness.

Zippy is as zippy does, and that goes for the interface and app performance on both phones. Turn on the Motion Smoothness display option of the S20 Ultra, and the ability of its screen to refresh at 120Hz immediately put it abreast of the Note 10+.

For a battery life hit, that is, but something’s got to give. The Note, however, returns the ball with the versatility of its S Pen stylus that can now not only doodle, select, or annotate, but also execute commands from afar.

You no longer have to download a separate app to activate rich navigation gestures, as Samsung has baked them into the S20 Ultra interface settings.

With up to 16GB RAM and a second-gen 7nm Snapdragon 865 processor, the new Galaxy has an edge before the 855 on 12GB RAM set of the Note 10+, but it’s on paper, as both perform admirably in benchmarks and in real life.

Battery life

Oh gods of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cries! This is the line that every Galaxy S-line or Note owner addresseд to Samsung when it comes to battery capacity. Samsung still put a 4300mAh battery to support the Note 10+ 4.5 million pixels, all the while Chinese flagships are at larger packs pushing 30% less screen dots, and their wisdom is on display in our battery benchmarks.

For the S20 Ultra, however, Samsung woke up from its slumber, and used a new packaging technology to stuff the largest, 5000mAh battery it has ever placed in a flagship. It had to, if it wanted to support a double whammy of 5G connectivity and a huge 120Hz display.

That extra juice results in longer endurance, albeit not drastically so, and if you keep things at 120Hz, the battery life may even drop a tad below the Note 10+ usage.

Nominally, the larger S20 Ultra battery should charge slower than the Note 10+ unit, but Samsung lists both as taking 70 minutes to fully charge as they support ultrafast 45W charging which can handle rapid top-ups of larger batteries. In reality, we tested the 5000mAh pack to go from zero to hero in an hour (59min., to be exact) which is even faster than what Samsung advertises.

Still, the high-res displays prevent the two phones from being at the top of the battery life pack among their peers, and Samsung is setting realistic expectations by saying that they are “full-day battery” phones, rather than overpromising.

Set the interface to dark mode, use 4G and the default display resolution and refresh, and not only will the S20 Ultra battery life be the best out of any Samsung flagship so far, but you may just stretch it well into the next day, too.